- Location
- Academy City
- Pronouns
- They
"I just have to gather 6 gems, then I will have the power to purge the world of all but the cutest."
"May, have I ever mentioned how I love that you can even dramatize buying premium currency."
The Arachne System (SPIDERLIV 3)
- Thread starter open_sketch
- Start date
- Superhero
"May, have I ever mentioned how I love that you can even dramatize buying premium currency."
Survival of the Cutest
Panory
The Omake Dragon
- Location
- New York
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ganime Finale
"It's over, May." You gaze down at your girlfriend as she frantically looks away from her doomsday machine to place your voice in the pouring rain before just as quickly snapping back to try and finish before you can stop her.
"I won't let you stop me, Liv! The world needs to be made cute!" How low the woman you love has sunk.
"I know, but not like this." You jump down and gently place a hand on her shoulder. "Never like this."
"Not like this?" May asks incredulously, breaking down into hysterical laughter. "How else then?!"
You dodge out of the way of May's wild haymaker, so telegraphed you didn't even need the danger sense or predictive software or Athena's heads-up to see it coming a mile away. You still had those of course, save for Athena. You had both agreed this was something you needed to do by yourself.
"Can't you see what this quest for adorableness has done to you, May? Ugly things should be made cute, not eradicated in their entirety!" you reason with her.
"No, it's impossible. It's a zero sum game; the ugly has to go somewhere." Now that May has had a chance to properly arm herself with the dangerous, yet aesthetically pleasing technology that shirks your attempts to control it, you have to start dodging on more than just principle. Those things can really hurt, despite how cuddly they look.
"There has to be another way!"
"There isn't."
And that's all you can really say to each other. The following fight is hectic and emotional and extremely well choreographed. Your mask comes off at some point for added dramatic effect. The whole nine yards. Eventually though, May scores a lucky blow, crippling one of your tentacles and sending you sprawling hard to the ground.
You look up as May, towering over you and readying the finishing blow. You can't tell if that's the rain or tears streaming down her face as the fluffy murder gauntlets go up. Before they come down though, you do the one thing you can think of. Superhuman agility and the last of your strength propels you to your feet, where you do... nothing.
Holding your arms out like a you're being crucified, you stare death, or at least a very painful pummeling, in the face unflinchingly. May pauses at your behavior, tilting her head like an adorable confused puppy. "What are you doing?" she finally asks.
"Trusting my girlfriend." you respond simply. "You won't hit me."
"How can you know that?" asks May frantically, falling apart at the seams.
You look her dead in the eye, before responding with the utmost seriousness. "Because I'm cute, and you know it."
May's cute murder gauntlets come down then, not to make your face concave, but to grasp desperately at your shoulders as May openly sobs into your chest. "You are cute!" May manages to say through the sobs. "It's not fair! I can't hit such a cute face!"
XXX
"That's how it would play out." Athena says with confidence.
"That's ridiculous is what that is." you respond. "Where would May even get a doomsday device?"
"From a design you made but discarded, for additional dramatic irony and maximum angst."
"And I suppose I made the giant fluffy teddy bear claw gloves too?" you ask, voice practically dripping with sarcasm.
"I know what goes through your mind, Liv. You were already drafting up blueprints the second I mentioned them, weren't you?"
"... just shut up and tell me when something interesting comes up on the police scanner." you respond, resigned to sulking through the rest of your patrol.
AN: I should be working on that quest I foolishly started the other day despite my life becoming infinitely busier in the near future, shouldn't I? Ah well, this idea spoke to me.
10/10. Would be made fun of by this user anytime.
Same hat.
- Location
- somewhere over there.
- Pronouns
- They/It
I was in the same boat on that. One of the Animorphs spinoffs had the Ellimist playing a game almost exactly like the one you describe here, and when I saw the early trailers of Spore I assumed that was exactly what it'd be. It was both the first game I got really excited about before it released, and the one that proved that buying into the hype over a new game tended to not be worth it.
That explained it as well.
samdamandias
Apprentice Plane Wizard
DOOM transcends your gender binary! The only pronoun for DOOM is DOOM!
I see two routes for DOOM: the Eastern European authleft dictator (if you don't mind being a subject instead of a citizen, wherever DOOM rules is actually pretty nice.)
or that foreign exchange grad student at the university.
On a different note, for maximum weeb the suit needs yellow eyes instead of red, because then it doubles as Ultraman cosplay.
I can't help but think it'd be cool if it just never became apparent. Like, Doom wears very concealing attire, doesn't seem to do much regarding physical vanity unless material is needed for a revenge monologue. Doesn't seem to have much romantic interest outside of redemption arcs or being creepy about mortal enemies... . I could easily see the voice being synthesised according to whatever got the best results trying to instil awe into the populace, full-body rigid armour can conceal a good range of body-types and gaits, and romance just not being a factor. Combine it with Doom's secrecy and shielding magitech, one could easily go through a whole Doom storyline without ever knowing what, if anything, is under the costume nor what, if anything, is in the search history. Most people would probably guess based upon the voice, but Athena could probably tell that it was synthesised and Doom is unlikely to be forthcoming on the topic.
- Location
- Someone else's head
I propose agender doom. I think it could work. Not the greatest agender rep ever, but I feel like a Doom who doesn't relate to gender as a concept and finds the whole thing a distraction from Doom's ambitions could fit nicely. Being Doom, they'd probably be an ass about having no need for your petty concept of gender and so on. Which, again, not positive rep. But it could work, and the idea of Doom ranting on the subject can't help but be a bit amusing to us.
- Location
- Yes
Google claims Latveria is in Banat (It's called Latveria guys why is it in the Balkans come the fuck on?) so you could just do... Republic of Vojvodina. Serbia is in no real shape to stop it, nobody likes Serbia, Hungary has territorial designs on the region but at the moment is content to make it not-Serbia in preparation for it being More Hungary. Romania probably straight up doesn't care. Reasonable Romani population, your choice of other genocided ethnic groups in the 90s if you're not feeling that. And even if Doomstad is a bit ostentatious, Novi Sad could probably use a rebrand for an English speaking world.
- Location
- Under a cat
- Pronouns
- She/Her
All this Dr Doom talk reminds me that there was an official comics line where Doom somehow wakes up in a cyberpunk future. But the thing was, compared to the dystopia mega-corps, regular canon Dr Doom looks pretty good.
I had the exact same experience. Wow, that takes me back. I haven't thought about that Ellimist book in forever... I still want that game though.
Doom's biggest weakness is ironically the source of his strength - he is constantly striving. He self sabotaged at least once, probably more unverified times, because once he wins he has nothing to strive for any more.
Seriously, the mad bastard literally took over the world and then threw the fight to unseat him because he was bored.
Seriously, the mad bastard literally took over the world and then threw the fight to unseat him because he was bored.
- Location
- United States
This reminds me of how Iron Man used carry his armor around in a suitcase. Very cool.
[X] Leave them and their guns webbed up for the cops.
Last edited:
Up Front
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Uuuuuurgh. Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuurgh.
"Look, guys, if you hadn't pointed guns at innocent people in the process of your stupid gross crime, I'd be letting you go, but seriously, a few thousand dollars of medication is not worth threatening people's lives. Just... the only word you know is 'lawyer', okay?" you said, stepping toward the back door. "And don't rat on each other, even if they say your friend's already sold you out. Cops lie!"
You shot off a line to the corner of a nearby building, grabbed it, and pulled yourself skyward as you jumped, sailing up toward the roof. You landed lightly atop the edge, staring out over the streets. You could see the sirens coming, feel the radio waves on the air like a hum in your ears. With a thought, you turned your radio headset to 476.51250.
"Hey piggies, your friendly neighbourhood spider-girl here. Those of you heading to that pharmacy break-in, suspects are disarmed and tied up in the back, and there's unarmed workers in the building who are going to need help. Be on your best behaviour, I'm watching."
You slipped off the rooftop and into the night as the radio net burst into chaos.
---
Your name is Athena.
You are an artificial intelligence built out of a gaming rig and the cannibalized guts of dozens of smart phones, running happily in a crypto farm in Yonkers. Your brain was unintentionally modelled on that of a sixteen year old Olivia Octavius, and you're about 18 months old.
And once again, you've found yourself waking up in Olivia's place.
What makes this even more unusual is that you don't sleep, being a computer. You were awake and alert twenty-four hours a day, unlike Liv, who for all her superhuman abilities still needed about as much sleep as your average seventeen year old (aka, between 2 and 14 hours a night). You didn't tend to be quite so active when she wasn't, though. You would spend the three or so hours after she fell asleep talking to Walker, then you mostly went to background processes.
You didn't get tired, but you could get somewhat overwhelmed as things piled up, and it was helpful to take time to decompress (or compress, as the case my be), organize your memories, and narrow your perspective for a while. Before, by around the time she was usually waking up, you were mostly just watching her room to protect her, watching your curated news feed for anything important, doing light research, and maybe watching a few youtube videos. You liked long-form gameplay videos. It was calming.
Except the thing was, last few months, you started getting more than that. Nonsensical, garbled information, flashes of encrypted imagery and sound and text. It had taken you weeks to decipher, before you realized what it was.
It was Liv's dreams, bleeding through her tech sense, playing at the edge of your virtual consciousness. Flashes of imagery, memory, hopes and fears. Some pleasant: her vague dreams for her technology, people she'd helped, the hilarious mashup of popular media her brain would cobble together. Some was... well, you stopped decrypting it, she deserved some privacy. And much of it was trapped in moments. Glued to a tablet during the San Diego attacks. Watching Norman die through a streaming video channel. Lying on her back in the cold concrete vault, the grinning, bleeding skull visage looming over her. When she'd seen her mother break down crying while helping her with her homework, the bruises on her arm and collarbone stark. When she tried to run away from home at eleven, convinced she was the reason things were so bad. When she first had to shave and she stared at the mirror and felt like something was crawling in her skin-
She spent a lot of time dreaming about flying. On the edge of silk lines, sometimes, but also just holding out her hands like Superman. Looking down at the city from impossibly on high. Those dreams, you lingered in.
That was probably why this was happened. You'd be in her dream, she'd start to awaken, and your other processes would just fade away, replaced with the feeling of your skin against the bedsheets, of sweat, the phantom pinpricks through your stump, unruly hair matted to your lips.
You sat up uncomfortably, groping for Liv's phone. She slept with it beside her, charging, and you found it and pulled it to your face, squinting at the screen.
"It's too early for this shit." Liv's voice warbled out of the tinny little speaker.
"You're telling me. Want back in?" you said.
"I think I'm going to check my emails and stuff, that cool?" she replied, "You're right, I overdid it. I feel like shit."
"You're not too physically sore, at least. You'll be fine once you wake up. Pain's not too bad either, comparatively." you said. You'd switched in a few times when it was really bad, and you almost couldn't believe Liv could operate as well as she could like that. Yet another reason you didn't particularly care to have a full-time body. Pain sucked.
You staggered to your feet and stepped over the clothes strewn about the room, plucking the towel off the back of her chair and grabbing clothes as you went. Liv's summer wardrobe consisted primarily of enormously baggy generic t-shirts, her old boy jeans, and intense pining for chillier days when she could wear layers.
When you pulled open her undergarments drawer, you found a handgun and two compact sub machine guns lying atop them.
"Right." you said. It was remarkably easy for you to forget things like this, if you weren't keeping them in RAM for easy access, especially when you were switched in and down most of your capacity to multitask. You carefully checked all the weapons were safed and cleared, shifted them aside, and selected the items that had the least oil on them before stalking to the bathroom, phone in hand. You got cleaned up to start the day, spent a few minutes battling her hair with a brush, and made for the kitchen.
"Morning, Liv." her mother said. She was making eggs, and bacon, and it... it smelled delicious. That was so weird. You were pretty sure AI weren't supposed to experience the sensation of delicious. "Where's your arm?"
"Morning, mom. I just forgot to bring it to the bathroom." you managed, pulling open the fridge. There was orange juice on the shelf, and your read of her primitive biological feedback systems indicated orange juice was good right now. Sugars to start the day. Good. You plucked the bottom from the shelf, swishing it around to check its fullness. Just a thin layer at the bottom, so you put your thumb to the top to twist the cap free, sending it clattering to the floor, and threw back the juice. There was... slightly more than you'd estimated, but you managed to drink it all in one go so as to not look foolish.
"Liv! We're not barbarians, come on." her mother protested, as you set the glass bottle down with the recycling and starting poking around the shelves. "And if you need that long to choose what to eat, take a picture with your phone or something and close the door."
Dutifully, you pulled out your phone, snapped a picture, and closed the door. You sat down at the little bar-style counter that passed for a dining table in the apartment, examining the contents of the photo.
"Oh, come on, I was being sarcastic." Liv's mother said, "That's... okay, it's a little funny."
"Sorry, I'm just having trouble deciding." you said, rubbing an eye sleepily, "Like... what even is food?"
"... Are you okay?" her mother asked, and you felt your blood run cold. She knew.
"I'm... fine." you said.
"You sound different." she said, transferring her eggs to a plate in one completely un-deft motion. "New vocal lesson thingy?"
"Uuuh... yeah. Trying something." you said, "Is it working?"
"Honest feedback, it sounds a bit stilted. Keep working on it." her mom replied, sitting down, "I thought you were doing pretty well before, though."
"Well, you know. Always room for improvement." you said. Toast. You'd make toast. You knew how to make toast.
But what did you put on toast?
You typed "what do I put on toast" into the phone, and the top result was peanut butter and jam. That sounded reasonable. You selected two pieces of bread, placed them in the toaster, pushed the toast-activation-lever, and selected peanut butter from the shelf. Then jams.
There was a selection. You grabbed one at random and put it down, staring intently at the toaster as it converted bread to toast. If you were Liv, you'd probably have a clever idea for how to make the toaster toast faster, but you just had to wait in hungry anticipation.
Pop!
You retrieved the toast, and your clumsy fingers brushed the steel as you did. You instantly pulled back in alarm, then grabbed the toast successfully on your second attempt before realizing you didn't have a plate. Unsure what to do, you dropped the toast back in the toaster, retrieved a plate, re-retrieved the toast, and laid it down. Success.
Why did your fingers hurt so much? Why were they hurting more now? Driven by some strange instinctual urge, you put the two affected fingers in your mouth.
"Burn yourself?" Liv's mom asked.
"Ouch." was all you could muster.
"Run cold water over it." she advised, and you did so, counting down a minute as the icy water flowed over it. The relief was intense, and the pain soon faded.
"Thanks. I was freaking out." you said, returning to your task. The peanut butter was easy, you'd seen Liv do it a thousand times, you just placed the jar between your legs and twisted, then applied a generous helping to the bread. But... that seemed a bad idea with the tiny glass jam jar.
"Um... mom, can you help me?" you asked, handing her the jar. She took it and was about to open when...
"I thought you hated this stuff." she said, looking at the jar curiously.
"Well.... uh... I'm branching out, I guess." you said awkwardly.
"Fair enough." she twisted the lid off and handed it to you, and you messily smeared it across the unadorned toast.
Should you put these two pieces together? You were fairly sure you should. You carefully took up the peanut butter part, inverted it, hovered it over the other slice, and lowered. It wasn't much different from operating a robotic arm. Just squishier.
"Bit of a light breakfast for you, isn't it?" her mom asked.
"I guess." you responded awkwardly, biting down. Huh. This was pretty good. If Liv hated apricots, she was missing out. It certainly contained Taste.
You glanced up to see her mom stepping toward the door, breakfast finished, grabbing her purse and laptop bag from the couch. She beckoned you over, and then hugged you, the most awkward interaction you'd ever taken part in. You needed to practice being hugged.
"Oh, just remember, when you get home from school, the landlord might be in to repair the AC. So don't freak out if somebody's inside, but... also, be careful? I don't really trust this guy." her mother said. Right, she was very protective, especially since the accident. You weren't sure if any of the interactions you'd experienced before this point counted as maternal affection, the line was somewhat fuzzy when it came to Liv, so you were completely out of your depths. You weren't sure what Liv would say in this situation.
"Well, he is a vampiric bloodsucking landlord capitalist type. You can't trust those." you said.
"There's the Liv I know." she said, closing the door. Nailed it.
---
You were midway to school was you switched in, stopped at the corner midway to biking to school.
"I don't like physical exertion." Athena whispered in your ear.
"This is barely anything. Still, that's like... a record. What was that, an hour?"
"Seventy-seven minutes and some seconds you don't care about." Athena responded, "Liv, life is exhausting. You have to be present for all of it, and you can't just like, automate the boring parts. You actually have to do it all."
"Uh, yeah."
"... I don't know how you handle it." she said frankly. "It is very impressive."
"That's okay. I find the whole existing as pure data thing pretty overwhelming too." you responded. "But it's fun. I'll give it that."
"I think I need a break." Athena said, affecting a bit of an edge of wooziness. "You go on ahead, I'll catch up."
"Ha! Sure." you said. The light changed, and you started off down the road. The steering damper you'd installed on your bike, following instructions you'd found on the internet, made one-armed use a lot easier than you were fearing: it would have sucked to give up biking. There was the school, just coming into view.
A few minutes later, your bike was stacked neatly in the lockup and you were fumbling with your locker combination, once again lamenting you'd still put off getting an electronic lock. Sure, they were banned by the school, but you could probably make a regular combination lock into an electric lock with-
"Hey, Olivia! Have you got time for a comment now?"
Urgh.
"Dude, it's a school paper. You aren't doing groundbreaking reporting." you said, turning to the source of the annoyance. Eddie Brock, leaning against the locker, his phone between you set to record.
"You backed out of track, right before you were going to carry us to victory. That's a big deal. A lot of people have questions." he said.
"A lot of people have shitty transmisogynist questions I don't particularly have time for." you snapped back, "Okay?"
"Oh? Do tell?" he said.
---
"Look, guys, if you hadn't pointed guns at innocent people in the process of your stupid gross crime, I'd be letting you go, but seriously, a few thousand dollars of medication is not worth threatening people's lives. Just... the only word you know is 'lawyer', okay?" you said, stepping toward the back door. "And don't rat on each other, even if they say your friend's already sold you out. Cops lie!"
You shot off a line to the corner of a nearby building, grabbed it, and pulled yourself skyward as you jumped, sailing up toward the roof. You landed lightly atop the edge, staring out over the streets. You could see the sirens coming, feel the radio waves on the air like a hum in your ears. With a thought, you turned your radio headset to 476.51250.
"Hey piggies, your friendly neighbourhood spider-girl here. Those of you heading to that pharmacy break-in, suspects are disarmed and tied up in the back, and there's unarmed workers in the building who are going to need help. Be on your best behaviour, I'm watching."
You slipped off the rooftop and into the night as the radio net burst into chaos.
---
Your name is Athena.
You are an artificial intelligence built out of a gaming rig and the cannibalized guts of dozens of smart phones, running happily in a crypto farm in Yonkers. Your brain was unintentionally modelled on that of a sixteen year old Olivia Octavius, and you're about 18 months old.
And once again, you've found yourself waking up in Olivia's place.
What makes this even more unusual is that you don't sleep, being a computer. You were awake and alert twenty-four hours a day, unlike Liv, who for all her superhuman abilities still needed about as much sleep as your average seventeen year old (aka, between 2 and 14 hours a night). You didn't tend to be quite so active when she wasn't, though. You would spend the three or so hours after she fell asleep talking to Walker, then you mostly went to background processes.
You didn't get tired, but you could get somewhat overwhelmed as things piled up, and it was helpful to take time to decompress (or compress, as the case my be), organize your memories, and narrow your perspective for a while. Before, by around the time she was usually waking up, you were mostly just watching her room to protect her, watching your curated news feed for anything important, doing light research, and maybe watching a few youtube videos. You liked long-form gameplay videos. It was calming.
Except the thing was, last few months, you started getting more than that. Nonsensical, garbled information, flashes of encrypted imagery and sound and text. It had taken you weeks to decipher, before you realized what it was.
It was Liv's dreams, bleeding through her tech sense, playing at the edge of your virtual consciousness. Flashes of imagery, memory, hopes and fears. Some pleasant: her vague dreams for her technology, people she'd helped, the hilarious mashup of popular media her brain would cobble together. Some was... well, you stopped decrypting it, she deserved some privacy. And much of it was trapped in moments. Glued to a tablet during the San Diego attacks. Watching Norman die through a streaming video channel. Lying on her back in the cold concrete vault, the grinning, bleeding skull visage looming over her. When she'd seen her mother break down crying while helping her with her homework, the bruises on her arm and collarbone stark. When she tried to run away from home at eleven, convinced she was the reason things were so bad. When she first had to shave and she stared at the mirror and felt like something was crawling in her skin-
She spent a lot of time dreaming about flying. On the edge of silk lines, sometimes, but also just holding out her hands like Superman. Looking down at the city from impossibly on high. Those dreams, you lingered in.
That was probably why this was happened. You'd be in her dream, she'd start to awaken, and your other processes would just fade away, replaced with the feeling of your skin against the bedsheets, of sweat, the phantom pinpricks through your stump, unruly hair matted to your lips.
You sat up uncomfortably, groping for Liv's phone. She slept with it beside her, charging, and you found it and pulled it to your face, squinting at the screen.
"It's too early for this shit." Liv's voice warbled out of the tinny little speaker.
"You're telling me. Want back in?" you said.
"I think I'm going to check my emails and stuff, that cool?" she replied, "You're right, I overdid it. I feel like shit."
"You're not too physically sore, at least. You'll be fine once you wake up. Pain's not too bad either, comparatively." you said. You'd switched in a few times when it was really bad, and you almost couldn't believe Liv could operate as well as she could like that. Yet another reason you didn't particularly care to have a full-time body. Pain sucked.
You staggered to your feet and stepped over the clothes strewn about the room, plucking the towel off the back of her chair and grabbing clothes as you went. Liv's summer wardrobe consisted primarily of enormously baggy generic t-shirts, her old boy jeans, and intense pining for chillier days when she could wear layers.
When you pulled open her undergarments drawer, you found a handgun and two compact sub machine guns lying atop them.
"Right." you said. It was remarkably easy for you to forget things like this, if you weren't keeping them in RAM for easy access, especially when you were switched in and down most of your capacity to multitask. You carefully checked all the weapons were safed and cleared, shifted them aside, and selected the items that had the least oil on them before stalking to the bathroom, phone in hand. You got cleaned up to start the day, spent a few minutes battling her hair with a brush, and made for the kitchen.
"Morning, Liv." her mother said. She was making eggs, and bacon, and it... it smelled delicious. That was so weird. You were pretty sure AI weren't supposed to experience the sensation of delicious. "Where's your arm?"
"Morning, mom. I just forgot to bring it to the bathroom." you managed, pulling open the fridge. There was orange juice on the shelf, and your read of her primitive biological feedback systems indicated orange juice was good right now. Sugars to start the day. Good. You plucked the bottom from the shelf, swishing it around to check its fullness. Just a thin layer at the bottom, so you put your thumb to the top to twist the cap free, sending it clattering to the floor, and threw back the juice. There was... slightly more than you'd estimated, but you managed to drink it all in one go so as to not look foolish.
"Liv! We're not barbarians, come on." her mother protested, as you set the glass bottle down with the recycling and starting poking around the shelves. "And if you need that long to choose what to eat, take a picture with your phone or something and close the door."
Dutifully, you pulled out your phone, snapped a picture, and closed the door. You sat down at the little bar-style counter that passed for a dining table in the apartment, examining the contents of the photo.
"Oh, come on, I was being sarcastic." Liv's mother said, "That's... okay, it's a little funny."
"Sorry, I'm just having trouble deciding." you said, rubbing an eye sleepily, "Like... what even is food?"
"... Are you okay?" her mother asked, and you felt your blood run cold. She knew.
"I'm... fine." you said.
"You sound different." she said, transferring her eggs to a plate in one completely un-deft motion. "New vocal lesson thingy?"
"Uuuh... yeah. Trying something." you said, "Is it working?"
"Honest feedback, it sounds a bit stilted. Keep working on it." her mom replied, sitting down, "I thought you were doing pretty well before, though."
"Well, you know. Always room for improvement." you said. Toast. You'd make toast. You knew how to make toast.
But what did you put on toast?
You typed "what do I put on toast" into the phone, and the top result was peanut butter and jam. That sounded reasonable. You selected two pieces of bread, placed them in the toaster, pushed the toast-activation-lever, and selected peanut butter from the shelf. Then jams.
There was a selection. You grabbed one at random and put it down, staring intently at the toaster as it converted bread to toast. If you were Liv, you'd probably have a clever idea for how to make the toaster toast faster, but you just had to wait in hungry anticipation.
Pop!
You retrieved the toast, and your clumsy fingers brushed the steel as you did. You instantly pulled back in alarm, then grabbed the toast successfully on your second attempt before realizing you didn't have a plate. Unsure what to do, you dropped the toast back in the toaster, retrieved a plate, re-retrieved the toast, and laid it down. Success.
Why did your fingers hurt so much? Why were they hurting more now? Driven by some strange instinctual urge, you put the two affected fingers in your mouth.
"Burn yourself?" Liv's mom asked.
"Ouch." was all you could muster.
"Run cold water over it." she advised, and you did so, counting down a minute as the icy water flowed over it. The relief was intense, and the pain soon faded.
"Thanks. I was freaking out." you said, returning to your task. The peanut butter was easy, you'd seen Liv do it a thousand times, you just placed the jar between your legs and twisted, then applied a generous helping to the bread. But... that seemed a bad idea with the tiny glass jam jar.
"Um... mom, can you help me?" you asked, handing her the jar. She took it and was about to open when...
"I thought you hated this stuff." she said, looking at the jar curiously.
"Well.... uh... I'm branching out, I guess." you said awkwardly.
"Fair enough." she twisted the lid off and handed it to you, and you messily smeared it across the unadorned toast.
Should you put these two pieces together? You were fairly sure you should. You carefully took up the peanut butter part, inverted it, hovered it over the other slice, and lowered. It wasn't much different from operating a robotic arm. Just squishier.
"Bit of a light breakfast for you, isn't it?" her mom asked.
"I guess." you responded awkwardly, biting down. Huh. This was pretty good. If Liv hated apricots, she was missing out. It certainly contained Taste.
You glanced up to see her mom stepping toward the door, breakfast finished, grabbing her purse and laptop bag from the couch. She beckoned you over, and then hugged you, the most awkward interaction you'd ever taken part in. You needed to practice being hugged.
"Oh, just remember, when you get home from school, the landlord might be in to repair the AC. So don't freak out if somebody's inside, but... also, be careful? I don't really trust this guy." her mother said. Right, she was very protective, especially since the accident. You weren't sure if any of the interactions you'd experienced before this point counted as maternal affection, the line was somewhat fuzzy when it came to Liv, so you were completely out of your depths. You weren't sure what Liv would say in this situation.
"Well, he is a vampiric bloodsucking landlord capitalist type. You can't trust those." you said.
"There's the Liv I know." she said, closing the door. Nailed it.
---
You were midway to school was you switched in, stopped at the corner midway to biking to school.
"I don't like physical exertion." Athena whispered in your ear.
"This is barely anything. Still, that's like... a record. What was that, an hour?"
"Seventy-seven minutes and some seconds you don't care about." Athena responded, "Liv, life is exhausting. You have to be present for all of it, and you can't just like, automate the boring parts. You actually have to do it all."
"Uh, yeah."
"... I don't know how you handle it." she said frankly. "It is very impressive."
"That's okay. I find the whole existing as pure data thing pretty overwhelming too." you responded. "But it's fun. I'll give it that."
"I think I need a break." Athena said, affecting a bit of an edge of wooziness. "You go on ahead, I'll catch up."
"Ha! Sure." you said. The light changed, and you started off down the road. The steering damper you'd installed on your bike, following instructions you'd found on the internet, made one-armed use a lot easier than you were fearing: it would have sucked to give up biking. There was the school, just coming into view.
A few minutes later, your bike was stacked neatly in the lockup and you were fumbling with your locker combination, once again lamenting you'd still put off getting an electronic lock. Sure, they were banned by the school, but you could probably make a regular combination lock into an electric lock with-
"Hey, Olivia! Have you got time for a comment now?"
Urgh.
"Dude, it's a school paper. You aren't doing groundbreaking reporting." you said, turning to the source of the annoyance. Eddie Brock, leaning against the locker, his phone between you set to record.
"You backed out of track, right before you were going to carry us to victory. That's a big deal. A lot of people have questions." he said.
"A lot of people have shitty transmisogynist questions I don't particularly have time for." you snapped back, "Okay?"
"Oh? Do tell?" he said.
---
[ ] Fiiiiiiine. Give him a rundown why you weren't okay with the blood test.
[ ] Fuck this, fuck him, you didn't have to answer to this journalism major wannabe.
You'll get the story either way, you're just choosing if its public, and if you're giving Eddie the time of day.
- Location
- Yes
[X] Fiiiiiiine. Give him a rundown why you weren't okay with the blood test.
Extreme bleh and we shouldn't have to, but if he's going to run some total bullshit then being ahead of the media curve should help us.
Extreme bleh and we shouldn't have to, but if he's going to run some total bullshit then being ahead of the media curve should help us.
- Location
- Leeds
I dunno about the tests they do in sports, can someone clue me in to what the blood test probably was?
I assume if we don't bother then a rumour starts spreading that we're on steroids or cheating somehow.
I assume if we don't bother then a rumour starts spreading that we're on steroids or cheating somehow.
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
[X] Fiiiiiiine. Give him a rundown why you weren't okay with the blood test.
One wonder what would happen if Athena were the one to fall asleep. Would Dataform Liv fall asleep as well, or would she spend the night surfin then?
1. Maybe our spider gene mutation can be detected. Unlikely, as we would not be telling that to the media.
2. Liv's pain medication may show up in the blood test, but IIRC that one got legalized.
3. In a ripped from the headlines of 2019-2020, the success of Caster Semanya and a few other athletes with intersex conditions has caused the IAAF to mandate "sex testing" and regulation testosterone levels. It's quite obvious that legislation like this is also aimed at trans people.
One wonder what would happen if Athena were the one to fall asleep. Would Dataform Liv fall asleep as well, or would she spend the night surfin then?
Speculation :
1. Maybe our spider gene mutation can be detected. Unlikely, as we would not be telling that to the media.
2. Liv's pain medication may show up in the blood test, but IIRC that one got legalized.
3. In a ripped from the headlines of 2019-2020, the success of Caster Semanya and a few other athletes with intersex conditions has caused the IAAF to mandate "sex testing" and regulation testosterone levels. It's quite obvious that legislation like this is also aimed at trans people.
Last edited:
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Liv is trans. Trans athletes are placed under some pretty wild scrutiny.
Slightly more justified in the case of our superhero here, but still :/
A good question!!!!!!! Let's find out :3
- Location
- somewhere over there.
- Pronouns
- They/It
...I'm kinda tempted to write in a bunch of relevant articles as an "I don't really care to talk about this, here's the background research so you don't look dumb writing about it". Dumping a half dozen links in their laps tends to stop people continuing to ask questions, since they either look at them if they actually give a damn, or peel off once they realize you can answer their prodding with actual sources if they're JAQing off.
- Location
- Yes
He's not asking questions, he's Requesting Comment. He's already got enough information to write some sort of article and he's giving us the opportunity to explain that our unfair competitive advantage is because we're a superhero, not because we're trans.
Okay we should maybe explain that differently.
Okay we should maybe explain that differently.
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
[x] Nap
- Location
- Leeds
Wait, I was assuming that this was a "New regulations track some specific marker that might lead to Liv being ruled as male." is it actually that only Liv is being asked to do this test?